Katalin Karikó’s speech at the Nobel Prize banquet, 10 December 2023.

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellences,
Dear Laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen,

On behalf of Prof Drew Weissman and myself, we wish to thank the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet and the Nobel Foundation for awarding us the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

It is a great privilege for us to belong to this most outstanding group of scientists who have received this award. Importantly to us, this award also recognizes the fellow scientists who worked diligently over decades to help build the foundation for our work that led to the development of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

The anecdote is true, we met at a xerox machine in the hallway of a Medical School building at the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. No, we didn’t wrestle with each other to get access to the copy machine, it is a made-up story. Instead, Drew and I started to work together, shoulder-to-shoulder through many decades.

We are very grateful to all those who have helped us on our journey, my husband Bela, daughter Susan, and grandchildren, Bear and Zsuzsi, and my sister, Zsóka. Drews’s wife Mary Ellen, parents Adele and Hal, and daughters Rachel and Allison; all of our families and friends; our teachers and mentors; and our fellow scientists. We thank their support, their generosity and their inspiration.

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